Bob Marley officially died of a rare acral melanoma, which according to UK scientists, are genetically distinct from other more common types of skin cancer.
After a four-year battle with the disease that started on his toe, Marley passed away in 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital). No mention of a white lighter in his possession.
The notion that using a white lighter is unlucky has managed to thrive among smokers of all kind. There are several reasons but one of the most well-known explanations emerged from rumors that several musicians had white lighters on them when they died.
Singers that were bruited to have been cursed by the white lighter popularly include Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain.
Colloquially known as "Club 27", the term became widely known after Cobain's 'death in 1994 with fans connecting his age, 27, to that of the other four rock musicians.
Internet myth buster site, Snopes.com, said that the said pop culture superstition is "false". An excerpt from the article reads:
The biggest knock on this theory is that the white disposable BIC lighter simply didn’t exist when Hendrix, Morrison, or Joplin died. The first disposable BIC lighter wasn’t produced until 1973, more than a year after Morrison’s 3 July 2024 death, and Hendrix and Joplin had both passed away even earlier, in 1970.
While it simply isn’t possible for Morrison, Hendrix, or Joplin to have been in possession of a white BIC lighter at the time of their deaths, they could have been carrying some other brand of disposable lighter, such as the Cricket.
However, this is also unlikely. The Cricket was available in the 1960s in France, but it wasn’t commonly found in the United States until after the brand was acquired by Gillette and introduced to American customers in 1972, well after the deaths of Hendrix and Joplin. (Jim Morrison had been living in France just prior to his death and expired in his Paris apartment, so he quite possibly could have encounter Cricket lighters prior to their introduction to the American marketplace.)
Furthermore, we looked through several biographies and obituaries offering the circumstances of the passings of Joplin, Hendrix, and Morrison, and found no mention of lighters being in their possession at the time of their deaths. In fact, mention of white lighters seems to appear only in articles that propagate the rumor.
Of interest, CraveOnline features 9 Most Amazing Things Found At Celebrity Death Scenes.